


Let This Whole Town Hear Your Knuckles Crack

by cynicalRaconteur



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 00:46:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynicalRaconteur/pseuds/cynicalRaconteur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moran used to think he was enough. He knows better now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let This Whole Town Hear Your Knuckles Crack

Moran is not normally a man to take things slowly, but as Holmes drops like a ragdoll from the roof he savours packing away his gun, skating a palm over the case after he is done. He hadn’t wanted to kill the soldier, though he would have. He will, if Jim tells him to. Obviously.

He takes his time going to the hospital as well. They will go to Holmes’ funeral, and Jim will laugh (Moran doesn’t laugh at funerals; he has a healthy respect for the dead) and then possibly they will go away. He knows Jim wants to go away, he’s not stupid. He sees the trapped, itchy look of him and he thinks, _I know you_. He thinks, _You are me before Afghanistan_ and he thinks, _I can fix that_.

He thinks the Congo will cheer Jim up. He likes corruption and warm evenings.

The wind has been still all day, but it picks up as he steps onto the roof. Moran doesn’t really notice. Instead, he drops his gun for the first time in his life.

The case springs open as it hits the ground, but nothing falls out.

He has heard it said that no matter how much you love someone, you back away as the pool of their blood starts to spread. Moran muses numbly that it is hate that drives you to skid through it on your knees and punch a dead man in the mouth.

Rigor mortis has set in, and Jim’s sharp little teeth rend the flesh from his knuckles as the spine stays unbending. Moran stares at his hand, bleeding into Jim’s bleeding mouth, and recalls vividly the spatter of blood along Jim’s jaw, his stern _‘Seb, darling. Not the face’_. He made some stupid joke about Westwood and designer stubble, always unsure whether Jim’s laugh was for him, with him, at him.

He laughs himself, sliding a gory hand into Jim’s hair and ruffling it out of his sleek Moriarty guise. Under his fingers, it becomes Jim’s hair again, the hair of mornings and midnights.

“You never tell me anything, do you, you mad bastard?”

Moran slides Jim’s eyes shut with bloody fingertips and slides the other hand around to his neck, checking for a pulse against all logic.

Nothing.

Obviously.


End file.
